


strength enough to build a home (time enough to hold a child)

by youareiron_andyouarestrong



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Based on a Tumblr Post, F/M, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-22
Updated: 2016-11-22
Packaged: 2018-09-01 11:22:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8622688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youareiron_andyouarestrong/pseuds/youareiron_andyouarestrong
Summary: Iris presents Barry with a new copy of The Runaway Dinosaur.





	

He doesn’t remember what happened to his original copy. It was lost or misplaced in the move from his house to Joe’s, and he remembers having an utter breakdown because he couldn’t find it anywhere, and nothing Joe or Iris said could calm him. The one he left on his mother's grave had been a copy he'd bought himself, at a used bookstore in the downtown area.  

This new copy looks strange to him (shiny cover, straight and clean pages, slightly different font), but it’s still recognizable. Still familiar. 

He’s just not sure what it’s doing on his _desk,_ though. 

“Iris?” he calls uncertainly. “Honey?”

She’d told him she’s left him something on his desk for him and now she’s in the doorway, waiting for his reaction. He can her move towards him, her arms wrapping around his waist from behind. “What do you think?” she asks casually, _far_ too casually, Barry can tell. “I thought it was time to get a new copy.”

“It’s great,” Barry says, entirely truthful, if not still confused. “But why now, though?”

“I think it would be great if we read it out loud to our kids,” Iris says and Barry can _feel_ how her heartbeat picks up against his back–or maybe it’s just him. “You know, carry on the tradition.”

There is a great, big, glowingly obvious, neon sign of a fact here that Barry wants to point out, but he is, despite what everyone seems to say or think, _not that dense._ “Well,” he says, a lot more calmly than he feels, it feels like hitting Mach 1 again for the very first time, “Are we going to? Have kids, I mean.”

They’d talked it about, they both _want_ children, but it’s not like they’ve been trying _actively_ apart from the usual– 

“Well,” Iris says, matching his tone _almost_ perfectly, “I should hope so, since I just got back from the doctor’s office today–”

It’s then when Barry’s legs decide to abandon him altogether, his knees buckle and Iris quickly helps him into his desk chair, all false calm is gone now, it’s beyond Mach 1 and straight into the speed of sound. “Bear?” she asks, alarmed, but he shakes his head quickly, clutching at her waist to reassure himself that this is real, it’s happening, neither of them is going to vanish into _never happened. “And?”_  he says.

Iris lets one hand rest on his shoulder, the other on his cheek. She looks the same as she always does, beautiful, calm, capable, as constant as the weight as the center of the earth, only-there is something subtly different now, some new glow in her eyes or her smile and Barry Allen, expert that he is on the smiles and glows of Iris West, knows very, very well that this is something he’s never seen before. “Bear,” she says softly, all feigned casualness gone, “Barry, honey, I’m pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.”

Barry’s not sure for the _life_ of him what he does next–he’s not sure _what_ to do. There are a million impulses and reactions coursing through him. He wants to run as fast as he can, he wants to hold Iris to him until their bones and veins meld together and never ever part, he wants to laugh, he wants to cry, he wants to scream, it’s joy and it’s terror and it’s lightning. There are a hundred thousand million thoughts in his head and he now becomes aware, with that sixth sense most husbands develop after being married long enough, that Iris has dropped this bomb on him and he _still_ hasn’t said anything yet.  

He’s gripping Iris’s waist and staring wild-eyed at the still quite flat plane of her belly, hiding it’s new changes. He looks up at her and she’s waiting for him, she’s always waited for him, and he’s never felt so unworthy and so grateful for the fact all at once. He swallows once, twice, three times, hard, hyper-aware of Iris’s careful breathing, the way she’s watching his face, how one of her hands has tightened on his shoulder waiting for his reaction. “Are–are you _sure_?” he croaks out, because he _has_ to know this, this cannot be a dream or a joke anything else, because he’s not sure he can bear it. 

Iris is not quite calm herself–there are two spots of color high on her cheekbones and her eyes are shining like stars, but her voice is steady. “Yes–I’m about four weeks along, now. Perfectly healthy and normal, the doctor said.”

He nods abstractedly, already running through his head the books he is going to have read, the crib they are going to buy, the tests he and Caitlin have to run, the news he is going to break to Joe– _Joe’s going to be a Paw-Paw._

It is this, more than anything else, that breaks through and brings realization ( _he is going to be a father, he and Iris are going to be parents_ ) and a strangled laugh bursts out of Barry, half delight, half terror. He pulls Iris into his lap without any hesitation, buries his face against the place where her heart beats, hands high on her back. “Oh God,” he says against her skin, a prayer, a plea, praise. “Oh God.”

“Are you okay?” Iris whispers, her throat sounding full and tight. “Bear, honey, talk to me.”

He pulls back enough to look up at her, his own throat feeling pulled tight and overfull. “I’m more than okay,” he assures her. “I’m–” Words fail him again and he presses his face against her, the warm, strong sweetness of her. “I’m so happy,” he says, and he knows if _he_ is feeling everything, too much, all at once, _Iris_ must be feeling twice as much as that. “Are _you_ okay? Do you need anything, want anything–?” 

“I’m okay,” she assures him immediately. “I am, honestly. Enjoy it while it lasts, honestly, who knows what’s going to happen next.”

He laughs again, strangled and next to a sob and she laughs with him, almost crying too. “We’re going to be _parents_ ,” she says faintly, the reality of it coming home to her too now. “We’re going to have  _kids.”_

It doesn’t sound like a prophecy to either of them until about a month later.

“Twins,” Iris says in shock, the two of them numb with it after. “You put _twins_ into me on the _first try._ What the hell is wrong with you?” 

“That is not even remotely how this works,” says Barry faintly, not sure whether to run or faint or just burst with pride; the male ego is a weird thing sometimes. “I mean, there aren’t any twins on my side of the family.”

“There aren’t any mine either!” Iris exclaims and they both look at each other. 

“So we’re just the first then,”Barry says and has to put his head on his knees, just a for moment, just to remember how to breathe. 

“You are _not_ going to faint on me, Bartholomew Allen,” says Iris from somewhere above his head. “You are not leaving me to explain to the nurse when she comes back in why my husband is lying on the ground.”

“It probably wouldn’t be the first time,” says Barry and he raises his head to look Iris in the face, new and familiar all at once. 

He reads _The Runaway Dinosaur_ to Iris’s belly, and the twins, his children kick at the sound of his voice.    


End file.
